Minimalist Bathroom – My Full Journey From Planning To Reveal

A comfortable and efficient shower room

Planning a bathroom is a serious business and one you don’t have to think about very often. A bathroom refurb is usually done when you move into a new home, or part of a renovation project and sometimes the last room in the house to get a makeover, experts say a bathroom refurb is roughly every 10-20 years. Here I am talking about the full renovation process, not about space styling, this would be worth another blog post later.

Here you are in a good place to discover an example of the full process, I will describe our full bathroom makeover below.

Oh and, I have designed this bathroom myself with a 3D online planner!

One of the first draft. Still unsure about the backsplash. Finally, I decided to use only one tile design to keep a minimal look

Here is our bathroom renovation story.
Disclaimer: This article only reflect my experience, I am not a housebuilder or a professional plumber.
I know there are professionals offering bathrooms renovation services from start to finish but in order to keep some cost down, I created the design and project manage all aspects myself. I am quite a hands-on person, however I know it is not for everybody, the thing is when I was a child building a house was part of my daily life as my dad started to build our 5 bedroom family house from scratch when I was 5y old (He worked in construction leading civil engineering projects), I guess I developed a taste for Home renovation back then :D. Coming back to my bathroom, I managed the full project: inspiration/design/budgeting and dealing with supplier/installers. I honestly can say besides the expected “last minute panic moments” typical during this type of work, I loved doing it and using the new bathroom is a real daily treat compared to the old one. To kick off the project, my partner and I had a good chat to align what we wanted:

A comfortable large shower with a ceiling shower head,

A practical, no fuzz, Minimal and Mindful bathing experience – I develop this in another article – here-,

A Tile collection we both like

Brace yourself, this article includes BEFORE pictures.

Background story – Why we needed a new bathroom :

When we visited the house for the first time, we knew straight away we wanted to renovate the Bathroom/Kitchen area which are in juxtaposed rooms. Reasons were :

Quoting phase :

My inspiration for my bathroom designs came from lifestyle magazines, a recent hotel experience, and online websites like pinterest. Once we were happy with the Bathroom Design. We proceeded in getting contractor quotes for fitting the material. Our project was quite technical and labor intensive. I posted my design on a few websites and contacted Bathroom fitters in my area so they could quote for us, here is an overview of what I asked them :

Strip down and dispose to the local tip of all elements of the old bathroom.

Create new drain pipe for the toilet

Create new wall partition with light switch and control interface for the underfloor heating

I soon realised while getting a few quotes in that dealing with a single company who could deliver and manage sub-contractors for different aspect of the bathroom installation (electrician, tiler, plumber) was going to be more practical for me as I didn’t need to liaise all of them separately.

Tips : Even if I did the Design myself, I asked the contractor to verify technically the design and all items in my plan BEFORE I placed any orders. This took us a good 2 hours to do but eased my mind. I then proceeded in ordering what I needed.

We choose the construction company that I had a good feeling with, the one who was available to answer any questions, had a few positive online reviews and quick to come back with a quote. It didn’t only come down to price competitiveness for us. It reassured me that they were willing to spend time going through product list and design before I paid any money and was confident to go with this company. They warn me that there could be hiccups but that typically they handle this type of last-minute issue. Items were delivered in a few weeks,

That was perhaps the most exciting moment when we knew that our project was moving forward and that the next installation was about to start.

The complete installation took about 3 weeks ! (during the week only). Luckily the first week we went on holidays! YAY! I would really recommend that – especially if you only have only one bathroom in your home – you can manage to shower at the gym or at work, but everyone needs a loo access every few hours… and as per the bathroom fitter told us, the first week usually is when the works of stripping down and installing the toilet take place. During the installation things progressed smoothly, I decided on tile grout colour with a sample book option that the bathroom fitter showed me, I didn’t feel rush and I was happy with the end result.

To conclude, I can say that our bathroom is now definitely one of my favorite rooms, everything is working well and taking a shower is a bliss. The underfloor heating is one aspect I would highly recommend, it is very nice to feel warm tiles when stepping in/out of the shower.

Finish project

Note: if you are interested to know what products are in my bathroom, I used Villeroy & Boch ceramics (Subway 2.0 collection and Metallic Illusion tiles collection in matt finish). Villeroy & Boch is a German brand of very good quality products. Their collections are also comprehensive with many sizes and colour options. The brassware is Villeroy&Boch (manufactured by Dornbracht). The shower tray is MX Elements slimline in 1500 x 800mm, it is made of stone resin. I bought the copper ceiling spotlight on ebay.co.uk

15 replies to Minimalist Bathroom – My Full Journey From Planning To Reveal

What a competent blog post. You’ve covered all the points so great for someone going through with their renovation. Although I would definitely not call myself a minimalist, I Love how practical and tidy your new bathroom is 😊😊

Blimey, what a difference. It looks so much more luxurious now! I did the same with our small bathroom renovation and I actually hated the entire process. I love the outcome but I found it so stressful! Great that you enjoyed it!